|
Pack of Lies – Menier Chocolate Factory This is the play they don’t make ‘em like anymore. This is a play with a beginning, a middle and an end which, even when you know how it comes out, you still hope it won’t. Like Hamlet, I guess. Not that Pack of Lies is anything like Hamlet really, it’s just that its outcome is so blindingly obvious even when you don’t know or remember the true story on which it is closely based. Pack of Lies, by Hugh Whitemore, is almost a documentary, so faithfully does it reproduce the events in the lives of the dullest family in England who in 1960 found themselves unwilling participants in a real life spy drama. The Jacksons, father, mother and teenage daughter, live directly across the street from the Krogers who are their best friends, in Ruislip, one of London’s most conventional suburbs. The women, Barbara Jackson and Helen Kroger, are housewives, in and out of each other’s kitchens, cooking, sewing, gossiping, while their husbands, Bob and Peter, are chummy but less close. Helen, childless, takes a particular interest in Julie Jackson who, in the manner of teenage girls, adores her first grown-up friend. They are, as Bob so movingly says in a speech directly to the audience at the beginning of the play, happy. And then, they aren’t. A ‘sort of policeman’ (Jasper Britton at his most sinister) comes to see them with backup from Scotland Yard to ask, demand rather, that they allow Julie’s room to be used as a surveillance position from which to watch the Krogers (Tracy-Ann Oberman and Alasdair Harvey) who are suspected of being Russian spies. For weeks, approximately between Bonfire Night and Christmas, there are watchers in their house spying on their best friends. Almost until the end, when the Krogers are arrested, the Jacksons refuse to believe in the possibility that their friends could be criminals and the secrecy they have to maintain and the sense that by not telling the Krogers about the surveillance, they are betraying the people who are closest to them, drives Barbara to a state near to madness. These are lovely, meaty roles for any actors and surprisingly difficult to play. It’s hard to be ordinary without overdoing it. Chris Larkin and Finty Williams are touchingly innocent as Bob and Barbara, thrilled by the attention their glamorous 'Canadian' neighbours lavish on them, and anguished by the role they are forced to play in their downfall. We come to understand that, whatever the outcome for Peter and Helen (they were sentenced to 30 years in jail) the Jacksons’ lives were irrevocably damaged by their part in the tragedy, their trust in other people destroyed, and their simple Englishness vanquished by their part in the betrayal of their friends, their country, and, ultimately, themselves. Understanding how difficult these roles are, the standout performance is that of Finty Williams as Barbara. Such self-loathing couched in the simple language of Barbara’s limited experience, is a tour de force, a remarkable achievement, not diminished by knowing that the original Bob and Barbara in the first production of this absorbing play, were her parents, Judy Dench and Michael Williams. About Leo – Jermyn Street Theatre There was no Theatrewise last week because, frankly, there wasn’t much to write home about and my mother, well, all our mothers, used to say that if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all. Which is something of a handicap when one is a professional critic. In the interest of full disclosure, though, there was a somewhat wasted opportunity at Jermyn Street Theatre in a conventional biographical play about the artist, Leonora Carrington, who was far from conventional. As a fine artist in her own right, she deserves to be known as more than the lover of the surrealist Max Ernst, perhaps indeed in a play of her own, but not this one. The Woods – Royal Court Occasionally, in Leo, the actors don animal heads and, oddly, they do so too in a totally incomprehensible play at the Royal Court. Usually, if I concentrate hard, and it’s my job so I usually do, I can glean the gist of a play’s plot, characters and intent, at least by about halfway through. With practice, I can even work out what Caryl Churchill is on about. But The Woods defeated me, utterly. The characters are called Boy, Kid, Wolf, Woman, although the actors play more roles than just these four. I can describe The Woods to you but not interpret it, so better not to try. The leading role, Woman, is played by that marvellous actor Lesley Sharp and if she couldn’t make me understand what the hell was going on, nobody could. Memorial for Sir Peter Hall
I’m now going to do something unforgivable. I’m going to tell you about something theatrically wonderful that you will never be able to see because it will never be repeated. This is a complete taboo in my business and should never, never be done. So. The greatest event of my theatrical year possibly my theatrical lifetime, was the memorial to Sir Peter Hall, first at Westminster Abbey and then at the National Theatre. Everybody you’ve ever heard of was there, packing the vast Abbey, and that was just in the audience. It started with Judy Dench in a simple dress enhanced by a bright turquoise scarf, speaking Shakespeare’s words of Cleopatra in praise of Antony, but really of Peter Hall, elucidating every word and making it ring. It ended with Vanessa Redgrave making a three-act play out of the familiar 1 Corinthians 13 until she convinced us that we had never heard it before. In between, David Suchet, in an ordinary lounge suit, with no costumes, sets or props, easily brought us the 18th century and into Amadeus’s sublime music of words and notes, reminding us of the moment when Salieri first heard Mozart’s genius and was utterly defeated by it, this with the assistance of the London Philharmonic. Also, with the orchestra, Thomas Allen’s unmatchable baritone singing Dei vieni alla finestra in Don Giovanni’s voice. And more. Much more. The Hall offspring, all six of them, reading the prayers as the theatre professionals most of them are, and hymns and tributes and serenades and addresses. And that was just the morning. In the afternoon, at the National, my mind still whirrs at the many pictures and words from the excerpts of some of Peter Hall’s most memorable productions – Waiting for Godot, No Man’s Land, The Oresteia, Hamlet, An Ideal Husband – performed by legendary actors from Ian McKellen to Greg Hicks to Edward Fox, all humorously introduced with an effortlessly light touch by Simon Callow. But the single moment that will stay with me always was the sight, while Callow was speaking, of a very old woman in a tatty track suit, laboriously pushing a broom across the vast Olivier stage, head down, until, when she finally made it to the other side, she lifted her head and she was Maggie Smith, and, in that voice which could belong to nobody else, delivered a single scatological line, paused, and left the stage. It is almost superfluous to point out that this one moment was the essence of what Peter Hall was about. It was pure theatre.
0 Comments
|
AuthorRuth Leon is a writer and critic specialising in music and theatre. Archives
March 2024
Categories
All
|